posted March 03, 2005 05:31 PM            

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote! - Benjamin Franklin

A Republic, Not a Democracy!
Steve Farrell
Friday, March 4, 2005

Liberty Letters, Madison, Tucker, Jefferson, Adams, Letter 24

Those who delude themselves into believing that our public schools and universities are telling the truth about the foundations of American government – or, for that matter, teaching our youth how to think – ought to read through the stack of e-mails I regularly receive from educated individuals who passionately defend that which is absolutely false and completely nonsensical.

The latest came from a female New Yorker, responding to my article Blessed Tolerance: The 'Virtue' of a Republic in Decline, who worked herself into a lather over my suggestion that a "me first ... anything goes" democracy is a shortcut to tyranny, and that a return to "liberty under the law," as per a republic, is what America needs if America expects to remain free.

I noted, summarizing Plato, that the ‘democratic man,' fixated on his beloved self-interest, first becomes tyrannized by his own lusts, and next tyrannizes everyone else in an unending attempt to satisfy his ever-growing list of lusts – which can never be fully satisfied.

The point being that a society dominated by weak and undisciplined, brutish and unprincipled individuals is ripe for tyranny because slavery and tyranny are already their lot.

Welcome to Human Nature 101. When self-love and self-indulgence are ranked as the greatest of rights, and toleration for every sort of extreme as the highest of virtues, trouble follows. Morality, law and stability take a hit. Turbulence, anarchy and political opportunism come in their wake.

Why is that so hard to understand? This is why the founding father of modern communism, Karl Marx, initiated the battle cry of the Communist Manifesto: "We must win the battle of democracy!" And this is why the Father of the U.S. Constitution, James Madison, opposed democracy, in these words:

[D]emocracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. (1)
"A republic," by contrast, "opens a different prospect and promises the cure for which we are seeking." (2)

Get it? Communist Founder Marx wanted democracy, and American Founder Madison did not, for the very same reasons: Democracies are unstable, violent, short-lived political systems whose chief aim is the overthrow of private property.

But that is not all. Democracies have other problems, as well, especially in their outlook on equality. They seek to "reduce mankind," Madison warned, "[until they are] equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions." (3)

That is, they preach and practice a false equality that, in the end, impoverishes and enslaves mankind economically, intellectually and morally into one common miserable lot.

This is the exact opposite of the sort of equality the American Founders promoted. St. George Tucker, the author of the 1803 "View of the Constitution of the United States" (the first commentary on the U.S. Constitution), explained what our founders meant by "all men are created equal":

By equality ... is to be understood, equality of civil rights and not of condition. Equality of rights necessarily produces inequality of possessions; because, by the laws of nature and of equality, every man has a right to use his faculties in an honest way, and the fruits of his labor, thus acquired, are his own. But some men have more strength than others; some more health; some more industry; and some more skill and ingenuity, than others; and according to these, and other circumstances the products of their labors must be various, and their property must become unequal. The rights of property are sacred, and must be protected; otherwise there would be no exertion of either ingenuity or industry, and consequently nothing but extreme poverty, misery, and brutal ignorance. (4)
Indeed, the American Founders rejected the equal-ends approach to equality because such an equality, the equality of a pure democracy, produces precisely what communism has always produced: "nothing but extreme poverty, misery, and brutal ignorance, " even as it undermines the best in men.

The Republic our Founders gave us, by embracing true equality – that is, equality under the law and equality of God-given rights – produced the most ingenious, industrious, prosperous, happy and enlightened people in history.

And so let's not pussyfoot around here. What, then, is the real object of a national educational establishment that has rewritten our history books and imposed curriculum mandates that teach the rising generation that the American Founders gave us a democracy?

And what, then, is this educational establishment's real objective when it uses democracy as justification for a "me first, anything goes" agenda that bans capitalism and Christianity from its "anything goes" list?

Are we really naive enough to believe that this fraud was perpetrated by men and women of pure motives, who love American liberty so much that they feel compelled to lie about her foundations?

My ‘educated' reader accused me of writing "an article supporting the end of our democracy." If she had been truly educated, she might have said, with Jefferson, "In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." (5)

She might have said, "You are right, Steve. We are ‘a government of laws, not of men' (6) – that is, a republic, not a democracy – and since ‘the best republics will be virtuous, and have been so,' (7) it is incumbent upon all of us to say ‘No!' to false definitions of equality, and ‘No!' to moral extremes that aim to undermine ‘liberty under law' in favor of ‘anything goes,' on the way to absolute tyranny."

posted March 05, 2005 06:10 AM            

Say I had enough of money to own Liberty Island and then I put up a big sign that said, "Keep off property!" or "Trespassers will be prosecuted!" would that make me un-American for exercising my rights in this country by doing such?

I live not too far away from a place that is just about that! In a place called Lake Wallenpaupack, it is pretty much all privately owned and even though the only way you can really enjoy this lake is to [one] have property there, [two] have a fishing license and [three] own a boat! And even though you'll see(once you first get over there a beach, picnic area and such), if you get caught swimming in the water without having proof that you already live there, you could be facing up to two years in prison!

Needless, I agree that one should have they're own privacy on they're own property, I do believe however that we should have some restrictions over how much land we tend to by up too as well!

posted March 05, 2005 12:30 PM            

And anyone owning or possessing more than they need should have it taken away....well, that is democracy for you. A bunch of people getting together to plunder the rights and property of others. Majority rules...right?

posted March 06, 2005 09:17 AM            

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Not likely Ozone. Mt Rushmore is a National Monument...in a National Park.

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So does that mean that it's controlled by bureaucrats and doesn't bureaucrats provide services to the public and doesn't the public enjoy these National Parks that is controlled by bureaucrats?

posted March 06, 2005 02:23 PM              

i'm glad i live in a Constitutional Democratic Republic...not a republic or a democracy

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"What's in a name, eh Petron?"-jwhop

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posted March 10, 2005 12:21 AM            

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i'm glad i live in a Constitutional Democratic Republic...not a republic or a democracy

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Glad to hear you've finally left the United States Petron.

posted March 10, 2005 12:34 AM            

Here is an article that goes a little into the confusion generally associated with the U.S. being a Republic instead of a Democracy, using as an example the case of Al Gore and George W. Bush both running for the presidency.
http://www.thelibertycommittee.org/repdem.pdf

America: Republic or Democracy?
The Difference That it Makes
by Herbert W. Titus
Senior Legal Advisor
The Liberty Committee
© 2001 The Liberty Committee
…[O]ur sages in the great [constitutional] convention…intended our government
should be a republic which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy
from a despotism. The rigours of a despotism often…oppress only a few, but it is
the very essence and nature of a democracy, for a faction claiming to oppress a
minority, and that minority the chief owners of the property and truest lovers of their country.
! Fisher Ames, American statesman, 1805
We consistently have adhered to the principle that the will of the people is the paramount
consideration. Our goal today…[is] to reach the result that reflects the will of the voters….
The laws are intended to facilitate and safeguard the right of each voter to express his or her
will in the context of our representative democracy. Technical statutory requirements must
not be exalted over the substance of this right.
! Florida Supreme Court, 2000
With the election of George W. Bush, America has its first president in over 100
years to be elected to office without having received a plurality of the nationwide popular
vote. Taking advantage of his popular plurality, Al Gore justified his fight for Florida’s 25
electoral votes as a battle for “the integrity of our democracy [which] depends upon the
consent of the governed, freely expressed in an election where every vote counts.”
Even after the Florida recounts under the extended timetable fixed by the Florida
Supreme Court yielded a Bush victory, Gore’s supporters insisted that Gore had a
“moral right” to continue his contest “because he leads in the national popular vote.”
Indeed, Gore’s more strident supporters claimed that, even if Bush won Florida, his
presidency would be illegitimate for his having failed to win the “vote of the people.”
Countering this claim, Bush defenders took advantage of a nationally televised
map showing that Bush had won 2,434 counties, while Gore had won only 677; that
Bush’s counties covered 2,427,039 square miles of the nation, while Gore’s totaled only
580,134; and that the population in Bush’s counties totaled 143 million while Gore’s
counties trailed at 127 million. Thus, the Republicans maintained a Bush presidency
would enjoy national support, whereas a Gore presidency would be rooted primarily in a
few densely populated regions of the country.
The Bush plea fell on many a deaf ear, however, as the Gore forces trumpeted
the Warren-era Supreme Court’s “democratic ideal” of one person/one vote. Finally, the
conservative wing of the current U.S. Supreme Court put an end to the seemingly
endless Florida recounts. But it did so on the grounds that the Florida Supreme Court’s
recount order was not democratic enough, demonstrating that they, too, have
succumbed to the liberal siren song that in modern America each voter’s vote must be
weighed equally. (Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. ---, 148 L Ed 2nd 388, 398, 400-01 (2000))
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Ironically, the court’s democratic solution catapulted the “minority candidate” into
the White House. By resting its decision on the democratic ideal of one person/one
vote, however, the court has undermined the very process by which President Bush,
and all American presidents before him, has been elected. That process is governed by
a constitutional formula deliberately calibrated to give greater weight to the votes of the
small, less populated states, and thus, making it possible that a president could be
elected with less than a nationwide majority of the popular vote.
Indeed, the process set forth in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution of the
United States does not even guarantee a popular vote for president. As the U.S.
Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore, supra,148 L Ed 2nd at 398, acknowledged, “[t]he
individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for the President of the
United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as a
means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College.” That
decision – not to prescribe a popular, nationwide election of the president – was no
accident, but was an integral part of the deliberate design of America’s founders to
create a federal republic, not a national democracy.
A Republic, If You Can Keep It
At the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 18,
1787, a Mrs. Powell, anxiously awaiting the results, pressed Benjamin Franklin as he
emerged from Independence Hall. She asked, “Well doctor, what have we got, a
republic or a monarchy?” Franklin quickly replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
From anti-federalist John Taylor to federalist Fisher Ames; from James Madison
of Virginia to Noah Webster of Massachusetts, Americans believed that they had
founded a republic, thereby charting a middle course between the Scylla of a monarchy
and the Charybdis of a democracy.
John Taylor, the preeminent theorist of Jeffersonian Old Republicanism,
proclaimed that “[a] federal republic is the best for maintaining a republican form of
government over a country so extensive as the United States,” dividing power “between
Federal and State departments to restrain ambitious men in both.” (J. Taylor, Tyranny
Unmasked 263 (Liberty Fund: 1992)) In a series of essays on “Monarchical versus
Republican Government,” federalist Fisher Ames warned against appeals to “the will of
the people,” claiming them to be mere camouflage for demagogues to seize tyrannical
power without regard for the rule of law. (I Works of Fisher Ames 116-186 (Liberty
Fund: 1983))
In Federalist numbers 10, 14, and 48, Madison insisted that the new
Constitution established a republic, not a democracy, emphasizing in Federalist No. 10
that a “Republican” form of government protected the people from the dangers of
tyranny of the majority. In his “Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal
Constitution,” Noah Webster, writing as an American citizen, extolled the virtues of the
American republic’s bicameral legislature; the very design of which was to protect the
people from rash and hasty laws passed by a transient, passionate majority.
This unity among America’s founding statesmen remained unbroken as late as
1945, 158 years after the ratification of the Constitution, when the 79th Congress of the
United States unhesitatingly approved, by joint resolution, the official pledge of
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allegiance to the flag of the United States, containing the phrase “and to the Republic
for which it stands.” Yet 60 years later, on the cusp of the 21st century, this affirmation
that America is a republic, like the pledge itself, has fallen from favor. In its place is a
new declaration that America is, and always has been, a democracy.
Indeed, there is hardly a voice left in Congress, much less in the White House,
Republican or Democrat, who refers to our nation’s government as a republic. Even
President Bush declared that his election to the presidency was a vindication of the
integrity of “American democracy.” In doing so, the new president was simply following
suit. For several decades, America’s political leaders have been promoting the virtues
of America’s “democratic ideal” within, by shaping public policy according to the latest
opinion polls, and at the same time, exporting democracy abroad, by employing
American military power to reshape other nations’ governments to conform more closely
to “the will of the people.” Both goals stand, however, in direct contradiction to
America’s founding principles.
America Is Not A Democracy
Those who insist that the United States of America is a democracy rest their
claim on the foundational principle in the nation’s charter, the Declaration of
Independence, “[t]hat governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed.” To support this claim, they point to the preamble of
the Constitution of the United States which begins “We, the people of the United
States…do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States.” Additionally,
they rely upon statements such as the one that appears in Article I, Section1 of the
Florida constitution that “[a]ll political power is inherent in the people,” a phrase that
appears in one form or another in every one of the 50 state constitutions.
Such statements do not, however, support the proposition that the civil
governments in America are democracies – quite the contrary. Read in context, all of
these statements support the proposition that America’s governments are republican in
form, not democratic.
First, although the Declaration of Independence does affirm that governments
derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, it does not, however, declare
that governments derive their purposes from the consent of the governed. Rather the
Declaration of Independence avers that those purposes are derived from the nature of a
created order, an order in which all mankind are endowed with certain “inalienable
rights,” namely life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Therefore, the Declaration of
Independence concludes that governments are instituted to secure these rights, not to
enforce the will of the governed.
Second, although the Constitution of the United States does affirm that the
people ordained and established the government of the United States, they did so, not
to promote the will of the people, but to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility,
provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings
of liberty to ourselves and our posterity….” Likewise, although the state constitutions
affirm that all power is inherent in the people, they did not establish state governments
to obey the will of the people, but to ensure that all individuals enjoy their pre-existing
rights of life, liberty, and property with which they have been naturally endowed.
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To achieve these purposes, the people of the United States and of the several
states well knew that a government under the direct control of the people was downright
dangerous, because, as James Madison put it in Federalist No. 10, “there is nothing to
check the inducements [of a majority] to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious
individual.” Thus, Madison contended, that a major task for any people seeking a
government to protect life, liberty, and property was to “prevent” the majority from
imposing “injustice and violence” on individuals who did not share the majority’s
“passion or interest.”
To that end, Madison and his constitutional colleagues chose a republican, not a
democratic form of government.
The Nation’s Republican Form of Government
At the heart of a democratic form of government is the rule of the majority,
unhindered by law. As the Florida Supreme Court, in support of its initial ruling
extending the statutory deadlines for recounting the votes in the 2000 presidential
elections, explained: “[T]he will of the people, not a hyper-technical reliance upon
statutory provisions, should be our guiding principle in election cases….” By contrast, in
Bush v. Gore, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, writing for himself and two of his
colleagues, declared that the rule of the Constitution, in that case the power of the
Florida legislature, prevails over any judicial attempt to vindicate the power of the
people.
The foremost distinction between a democratic form of government and a
republican one, is the subordination of the power of the majority to the rule of law. To
accomplish this, there must be rules of law that prevent the majority from imposing their
will through the election process. The Constitution of the United States is replete with
such safeguards. Not only is the legislative power divided between the House of
Representatives and the Senate, but also the number of senators is determined not in
proportion to the population, but equally state by state. Even the U.S. House, the
membership of which is proportionate to the population, guarantees to each state,
regardless of population, at least one representative.
Additionally, a bill does not become law simply upon the vote of a majority of the
members of both chambers of Congress. It is subject to the veto of the president, which
can only be overridden by a two-thirds majority in both chambers. In addition, as
previously mentioned, the state-by-state process by which the president is elected does
not guarantee to a nationwide majority of the people the power to elect the president.
Not only do these political checks and balances exist, but there is also the
separation of powers among the three branches of government. Even if a majority of
the people voted for the president, the head of the executive branch, that same majority
cannot elect the members of the legislative branch, thereby ensuring that the elected
officials of the two branches answers to different constituencies of the people. As for
the judicial branch, its members are not elected, but appointed, and although the
president has the power of appointment of federal judges, that power is subject to the
advice and consent of the Senate.
Not only does the Constitution diffuse the powers of government within the
federal government, but also it divides the powers of government between two
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independent and sovereign entities, the federal and the 50 states. As a government of
enumerated powers, Congress, the president and the courts are forbidden by the Tenth
Amendment from exercising the police power which belongs exclusively to the states.
Finally, the constitutional provisions establishing the system of checks and
balances, separation of powers, and a federal union may not be changed by a majority
of the people, but only by an amendment process requiring majority votes of two-thirds
to propose and three-fourths to ratify. In addition, even these supra majority
requirements cannot be exercised directly by the people, but only by their elected
representatives.
All of these limits have been placed upon the federal government by the people
whose elected state representatives proposed the adoption of the Constitution, and
whose elected representatives ratified the Constitution in conventions assembled in
each of the original states. By so establishing these safeguards against the absolute
rule of a majority, the people of the United States unquestionably created not a
democracy, but a republic, which John Adams succinctly defined as a government
“bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and a right to defend.”
(J. Adams, “Novanglus No. VII,” reprinted in The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams
227 (Liberty Fund: 2000))
The 50 States’ Republican Form of Government
Not only does the Constitution of the United States prescribe a republican form of
government for the nation, but also, by Article IV, Section 4, commands the United
States to “guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government….”
Each of the 13 original states entered the union, having already formed governments
which were republican in form, including political checks and balances and separation of
powers in their respective constitutions. Additionally, those same states came into the
union subject to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, thereby committing
each state to enact laws to secure the inherent individual rights of life, liberty, and
property, not to implement the will of the people.
To ensure that future states admitted to the union were subject in like manner to
the republican principles of the nation’s charter, Congress, even before the ratification of
the Constitution of the United States, resolved that new states formed out of the
Northwest Territories would be “republican…with the same rights of sovereignty,
freedom, and independence as the other states.” (Sources of Our Liberties 387-88 (R.
Perry, ed., Amer. Bar. Found.: 1978)) Thus, the Northwest Ordinance, adopted by
Congress, prescribed that the newly formed states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan,
and Wisconsin would be admitted to the Union on an “equal footing with the original
States, in all respects whatsoever….” (Id. At 397 emphasis added)
Prior to the admission of these states, and thereafter, all of the states of the
Union have been admitted on the “same footing” (Coyle v. Oklahoma, 221 U.S. 559
(1911)), thereby fulfilling the obligation of the United States to guarantee each state a
republican form of government.
As to preserving that republican form, the United States Supreme Court has
consistently declined to impose a legal definition of a republican form of government,
leaving it to Congress to enforce that guarantee by the exercise of Congress’s power to
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admit to, or exclude from, that body a state’s elected representatives and senators.
(See Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433,454-56 (1939)). As for Congress, it has not seen
fit to intervene in the internal governmental affairs of the states, leaving it to the people
of those states to determine the specific republican form of government by which they
will be ruled.
It is certainly arguable that some states have approved some democratic
procedures that depart from the pure republican form. For example, the initiative and
referendum, whereby the people of some states, by constitutional amendment, have
reserved to themselves the power to propose and enact laws independently of the
legislative assembly, as well as to approve or reject any act of that body, thereby
making it possible for public policy to be made directly by a majority without the political
accountability of a representative assembly. (See Federalist No. 10.) Such powers are,
however, limited by law to “single subjects” and to legislative and executive
implementation. To date, no state has substituted a system of direct democracy in
which the people “assemble and administer the Government in person.” (Federalist 10)
Conclusion
Just under 200 years ago, Fisher Ames penned an essay warning the people of
America not to place confidence in the democratic ideal whereby governments are
structured to reflect the will of the people. While the “power of the people is their
liberty,” he wrote, the people “can have no liberty without strong…restraints upon their
power.” (I Works of Fisher Ames, supra, at 5) America’s founders knew this to be true
because they had studied the history of democracies and discovered that they inevitably
destroyed both the morals and liberties of the people. If the modern-day drive for
democracy in the nation continues, the American people will experience a similar fate.

posted March 10, 2005 03:31 PM            

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Please feel free to get back to me on the subject WHEN the United States government sells the National Park and Monument to a corporation or private individual.

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posted March 13, 2005 04:22 PM            

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note: a separate listing for Hispanic is not included because the US Census Bureau considers Hispanic to mean a person of Latin American descent (including persons of Cuban, Mexican, or Puerto Rican origin) living in the US who may be of any race or ethnic group (white, black, Asian, etc.)

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posted March 15, 2005 03:10 PM            

Ultimately, the whole world is going to end up having that problem when they fill out any forms. Just give it a few generations.

Then they'll have to change the forms...

posted March 20, 2005 11:23 PM            

The thing that has me really laughing is that my husband is half Carribean "hispanic" and half Irish American. So our baby is going to be ... what?
3/4 "hispanic", 1/4 "white"?
2/4 Cuban, 1/4 Mexican, 1/4 Irish?
Yet we're Americans, of course ... and skin-tone-wise we're white ... very pale white at that.
I mean, really, it just gets ridiculous after a while. Maybe our whole family will just start a "human" trend and see where it takes us.